Conducting an Effective Tailgate Safety Meeting

The Challenge

Safety professionals and managers operate in a performance-based world, meaning that their efforts must be measurable and effective. Too often, employers develop policies and procedures, place them on the shelf and fail to implement them in an effective manner. This check-the-box strategy is a recipe for failure.

Employers have an opportunity to provide regular, useful and effective training through mandatory tailgate safety meetings. However, most contractors fail miserably at this valuable training and communication opportunity, simply because no one has ever taught the presenter how to effectively communicate.

Common mistakes include:

• failure to plan a topic or prepare an outline;
• reading word for word, directly from a script;
• choosing the wrong person to facilitate the training;
• not providing the training in a language that is understood by all workers;
• not encouraging two-way communication by asking leading questions such as “give the group an example of how you have experienced this…”
• providing information that is not pertinent (e.g., conducting heat illness prevention training when all trades are doing finish work inside an air-conditioned building);
• failure to properly document the training and not requiring legible printed name, signature and employer name of all attendees;
• failure to maintain adequate records of the meetings throughout the duration of the project and beyond; and
• skipping a meeting because only a handful of workers were on the job.

The Solution

These failures and others can be easily corrected with a little coaching from an experienced and knowledgeable individual that has patience, ingenuity and communication skills that he or she is willing to share with co-workers. Effective techniques include:

• Develop a Safety Committee and assign them the task of determining relevant topics.
• Use a “tag team” approach in that two or more key individuals develop topics and outlines for each meeting and conduct the meeting together or rotate the responsibility from week to week.
• Create a meeting outline limited to three or four key talking points, e.g., Keys to Heat Illness Prevention could include:
  • availability of water, rest and shade;
  • signs and symptoms of heat illness including heavy sweating, irritability and rapid heart rate;
  • treatment methods including moving the affected worker into the shade or an air-conditioned environment, encouraging the consumption of small amounts of water, or calling 911 if the worker is showing life threatening symptoms.
• Practice the meeting multiple times before a group of peers that can provide constructive feedback.
• Create written handouts in English and other languages as appropriate. The regulations and best practices require that training be conducted in a language that is clearly understood by the target audience.
• Foster two-way communication by asking safety meeting participants what is important to them. Ask for the problem and the solution with questions such as: “What are the two most dangerous condition on this job, and what can we do to limit worker exposure to the hazard”?
• Have a thorough knowledge of the project scope of work and current status such that relevant topics can be selected for any particular meeting.
• Have a sign in sheet available that includes date, topic, presenter name, company name and a place for each participant to print and sign their name and provide their employer’s name.
• Maintain adequate and useful records by scanning each topic and sign in sheet into an electronic format and archiving according to company recordkeeping policy.

Determining Relevant Topics

Some companies struggle with determining relevant topics and comment that many topics (such as fall protection) seem to be used repeatedly. A good source of topics is OSHA’s top 10 citations (for fiscal year 2018):

1. fall protection;
2. hazard communication;
3. scaffolding;
4. respiratory protection;
5. control of hazardous energy (lockout/tagout);
6. ladders;
7. powered industrial trucks;
8. fall protection-training;
9. machinery and machine guarding; and
10. eye and face protection.

Other excellent topics are the Focus Four, which are the four leading causes of construction worker injury and death in the United States:

1. falls;
2. electrical;
3. struck by; and
4. caught between.

For company-specific topics, some employers use incident and injury data from the following:

• Form 300;
• First Aid Log;
• Incident Reports;
• Near Hit Reports; and
• Good Catch Report.

Return on Investment

All of these efforts can quickly become moot if the return on investment is not recognized and communicated to key individuals within the organization. Benefits to the organization include:

• compliance with the regulations;
• demonstrate a proactive, rather than reactive, strategy to promoting worker safety and health;
• communicate meaningful and useful information to affected workers; and
• provide the opportunity to interact with all workers on the project on a regular basis.

Not only are regular tailgate meetings required by law, but they are a prudent investment of time. The most profitable companies are usually the safest companies, and regular tailgate meetings help support a positive safety culture. Following these suggestions will lead a company in its Best in Class efforts to promote and ensure a safe work environment for all of its workers.